Minority solons to push for P800-M family health fund

MANILA, Philippines—The minority bloc in the House of Representatives will push for the retention of the P880-million allocation for family health at this week’s bicameral conference committee on the P1.645-trillion national budget for next year.

“We have to fight for it. This is a general program for family health. (The allocation) has been there for several fiscal years,” Minority Leader Edcel Lagman said in an interview by phone.

If the Aquino administration can retain the whopping P21 billion for its cash transfers to the poor, “how much more a smaller amount for family health?” he said.

The Senate slashed P872 million from the Department of Health’s (DoH) P880-million budget for family health and realigned this to state universities and colleges in its version of the 2011 budget.

During Senate deliberations, senators backing the Catholic Church’s stand against the use of contraceptives moved to realign the family health funds which they said may go to purchasing condoms for the poor.

No protest from Palace

Malacañang did not protest but said it would make do with the measly P8 million that would chiefly fund the purchase and distribution of contraceptives to the country’s poor.

The House is set to elect on Monday members of its panel that would include Lagman and minority lawmakers in time for Tuesday’s convening of the bicameral conference committee to reconcile differences in the 2011 national budget.

The Senate and House hope to wrap up the bicameral conference this week so they could ratify their report before adjourning on Dec. 15, thereby giving President Benigno Aquino III ample time to sign the budget measure into law before the year ends.

Lagman, a staunch advocate of the controversial reproductive health bill, suggested that the executive branch tap into other items of the 2011 budget to restore cuts in the allocation for state schools.

“There are other sources for state universities and colleges, but not from the family health (allocation). That has been a traditional budgetary allocation for several fiscal years already, and that is not an excuse for contraception,” he said. TJ Burgonio, Philippine Daily Inquirer